Oberlin, 2023

 

Laura Garza leading comrades in prayer
(MILITANT/ARTHUR HUGHES)

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), publishers of The Militant, report on their recent International Educational Conference held June 8 - 10 in Oberlin, Ohio. There are two articles describing the event, both written by Steve Clark and Terry Evans--members of the Party's core leadership. They're entitled Socialist Workers Party leadership sets course ahead and ‘A road forward to raise workers’ confidence in our own capacities’. One can think of these as being news and commentary, respectively, and for brevity I'll refer to them as such.

The news piece highlights the report given by Jack Barnes, the national secretary and Party's chief honcho. We're told that 333 people attended the conclave, including representatives from Canada, the UK and Australia, which seems around average for prior years. The article lists the agenda in a series of bullet points, which I quote here in shortened format.

In addition to defense of constitutional freedoms, the report by the party’s national secretary adopted by the June 12 leadership meeting focused on:

• The centrality of organizing solidarity through the unions ...
• Why advancing women’s emancipation cannot be reduced to the fight for the decriminalization of abortion. ...
• The necessity of a proletarian internationalist course. ...
• Why the unions must lead in forging an alliance of workers and exploited farmers ...
• Why achieving any of these goals requires the working class and trade unions to break from the Democrats, Republicans ...
• Advancing the revolutionary fight by the working class to remove state power, including the power to make war, from the ruling class and to establish a workers and farmers government that, as the SWP Constitution says, “will abolish capitalism in the United States and join in the worldwide struggle for socialism.”

The Party is justly proud of its defense of Constitutional rights, which has been a tradition since its founding. Indeed, I'm proud to say that I've been consistent on the subject as well, defending the SWP's right to free speech and to equal treatment under the law back when I was a comrade, and extending the same defense to Donald Trump and his followers today. Clark & Evans point out that

The same espionage statute wielded by Biden against Trump was used in 1918 to jail Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs for his support for the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution and opposition to U.S. imperialism’s predatory aims in World War I.

The SWP is the only organization on the Left that I'm aware of that is consistent in its support of Constitutional rights for ALL citizens, including both Trump and Debs (and James Cannon imprisoned under the Smith Act). For this it deserves considerable credit.

The Party's statement on women's rights is also more sensible than you'd expect. They write,

The starting point in the battle for women’s emancipation, Barnes said, is recognizing and addressing the growing social and economic crises that prevent working people starting families and providing for them. That means fighting for jobs  with wage rates, work schedules and conditions that make family time possible — time for social activity together, sports, recreation, caring for children who are sick or need help with their homework, help for the aging. Time for family members to read, to take part in union, political and cultural activity.

Astonishingly, the Party is both pro-child and pro-family, which makes their decades-long championing of abortion rather embarrassing. The topic was debated during last year's convention, which resulted in the book The low point of labor resistance is behind us, which I reviewed here. Abortion, instead of being legalized should now only be decriminalized. I'm not sure what the difference is, but the latter makes it sound less important. Mr. Barnes goes on to say

The political course pursued by Democrats, the middle-class left and leaders of today’s bourgeois-minded women’s organizations, however, heads in the opposite direction, Barnes said. They reduce the fight for women’s rights to abortion access, campaigning for capitalist (almost always Democratic Party) politicians and “breaking the glass ceiling” to get more women into well-remunerated professional and managerial positions.

The Party is much more sensible than their nuttier comrades on the Left, who believe in 52 genders and that a man can transition into a woman simply by putting on a dress. The Party actually believes in fertility, which places them in the realm of sane political discourse.

But I won't go along with their communist project to socialize all childcare. This is a totalitarian project.

The commentary article tells us that a "proletarian internationalist course" actually consists of: solidarity with the Cuban "revolution."

The socialist conference opened with a political report by Mary-Alice Waters. Having led three political trips to Cuba this year by teams of cadres in the SWP and broader communist movement, Waters focused, among other topics, on political and leadership lessons of Cuba’s socialist revolution and Washington’s intensifying efforts to crush it.

The news yields a bit more information:

Barnes pointed to the global media blitz Washington has begun cranking up, alleging Chinese government spying operations in Cuba — charges Cuban leaders rebutted as “mendacious and unfounded” lies. Such false charges, the SWP leader said, are in line with the Biden administration’s course — building on that of the Trump White House and every Democratic and Republican administration for some 65 years — to overturn the socialist revolution in Cuba. 

That's it--endless solidarity and uncritical acceptance of everything the Cuban government says is all there is to internationalism. 

The Party's union work is so small scale and unimportant that it's barely worth mentioning. To wit:

Organizing solidarity is the backbone of work to strengthen the unions. Barnes pointed to the recent example of eight rail workers, all members of SMART-TD Local 1373, joining the picket line of striking Teamsters at Liberty Coca-Cola Beverages in Philadelphia last month. They brought several hundred dollars to donate to the strike fund.

Eight workers and a few hundred dollars adds up to a hill of beans. For what it's worth, the Party doesn't participate in what is probably the most viable union movement around: Labor Notes. I posted a piece on that, and in the comments I point out why I think the SWP abstains. I stand by that comment.

Similarly, getting the unions to break with Democrats is a lost cause--the Democrats have all the money and also power to change labor laws. More, unionists intrinsically understand economics better than my Trotskyist friends, blinded as they are by Marxist theology. The issue is about divvying up the producer surplus, not about who owns the means of production. The unions have got that right.

The last bullet point is simply a religious assertion--it has no practical consequence whatsoever. It is to Trotskyism what Judgement Day is to Christianity. But, beyond narrow pork barrel issues, it's a religious and moral impulse that motivates humans to engage in politics at all. And that's the role of the last bullet--it puts everything into moral perspective and justifies all the efforts (however futile) in trying to get from here to there.

The photo of Ms. Garza highlights the commentary article, and frankly "prayer" was the first word that came to my mind when I saw it. I doubt Ms. Garza experienced it that way, but if she's talking about that last bullet point--the ultimate purpose of the whole thing--then prayer is exactly what it was. And so, however unintentionally, The Militant's photographer and editor have accurately illustrated what the Socialist Workers Party is all about.

Amen, Amen!

Further Reading:

• Oppression!
• Wittenberg, 2022
• Cuba Needs More Communism!

 

Wittenberg, 2021

Octogenarian SWP leader Jack Barnes, with similarly aged Mary-Alice Waters seated at the dais.
(Source: Militant/Dave Wulp)

Just what is to be done, anyway?

You will never find the answer to that question in Terry Evans' and John Studer's account of the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP, aka the Party) conclave (SWP conference: Leading the working class to take power), held this year at Wittenberg University in Wittenberg, Ohio. Such conferences--annual events, but for last year because of the pandemic--have historically taken place at Oberlin College and became known as Oberlin conferences. The venue changed this year because Oberlin College humiliated itself by slandering a local bakery.

The conference had three themes, highlighted on the banner above the podium: 

• Leading the Working Class to Take Power
• Join the Socialist Workers Party!
• Build the Communist Vanguard!

It beggars belief that the SWP--a grouplet of barely 100 comrades--is going to lead the working class to power. 

Socialist revolutions can only be led by parties that have been built and steeled in struggle beforehand. Their members are imbued with the program, the courage and audacity needed to lead millions to take power when it becomes both possible and essential in order to prevent the triumph of reaction.

That's pretty rich coming from cadre whose median age is now over 60 and whose numbers are dwindling through natural attrition. This faith is not based on any historical precedent or material fact--it is simply a religious assertion. They're the chosen people.

The second bullet represents an appeal to those few attendees who were not yet members of the Party--in numbers insufficient to make any material difference. I have no idea what the third bullet means as distinct from the other two.

If those were the three themes of the conference, they are not discussed in Evans' and Studer's article. Instead they highlight three other topics: Malcolm X, Israel, and historical materialism.

The conversation about Malcolm X begins this way:

At the last party conference in June 2019, the banner hanging above the platform read, “Advancing Along the Line of March of the Working Class. Act on Imperialism’s Deepening Political Crisis. Build the Labor Movement. Build the Socialist Workers Party.” No one could have foreseen how today’s capitalist crisis would unfold these last two years, Barnes said, but the SWP acted on what that banner said, never missing a beat in going more deeply to the working class and dealing with challenges posed by the pandemic along the way.

Then follows some boilerplate about how, despite the pandemic, they continued to sell Militants, oppose police brutality, etc., etc. Somehow that segues into this:

Barnes urged participants to read what Malcolm X said about how he had to transform himself to become a revolutionary leader. A precondition for Malcolm acting on his own worth and that of other working people was turning his back forever on the life he led as an uneducated hustler, thief and pimp.

It was in prison that Malcolm started to read and to get his life together. Mr. Barnes claims he was becoming a revolutionary. Instead, he was becoming a devout follower of the Nation of Islam--a religious conversion. Mr. Barnes' own language--"acting on his own worth"--is a weird way of acknowledging that.

What are our elderly comrades, who likely have never smoked a joint in their entire lives, supposed to take away from this? Are they in danger of becoming hustlers, thieves or pimps?

I think Mr. Barnes is reiterating the religious mission of the Party. For if they lose faith in their status as the chosen Vanguard, then the Movement falls apart. Any sense of human worth--much less your "own worth"--stems fundamentally from religious faith. Absent religion, human beings are just animals, and all we usefully do is eat, sleep and fuck.

The second topic--Israel--is introduced this way:

The endurance of Jew-hatred in the imperialist epoch, and its use at times of crisis by the capitalist rulers to divide and crush the working class and its communist vanguard, requires the revolutionary party to champion the fight against it and unconditionally defend the right of Israel to exist today, SWP leader Dave Prince said in the second major conference presentation. It was entitled, “For Unconditional Recognition of Israel as a Refuge for Jews in the Imperialist Epoch: The Stakes for the World Working Class.”

I commend the Party for disavowing the rabid antisemitism found nearly ubiquitously on the American Left. But have they gone too far with this?

If there ever was a chosen people, then it certainly is the Jews. They wrote the Bible--a marvelous and elegant collection of folk wisdom compiled over two millennia and expressed in beautiful language. No other book in the world can compete.

This inspires great envy, and that envy is the source of Jew-hatred. The Germans may have an illustrious and accomplished history--but nothing like the Jews. China may be 5000 years old--but they have produced no book like the Bible. Hinduism can plausibly lay claim to being the world's oldest religion--but they never wrote anything down until recent times.

Everybody envies the Jews, and so even today the Jews are placed at the center of world history. Israel is often held up as the archetype of evil--not because Israel is so sophisticated or threatening, but simply because it's Jewish.

The Party also envies the Jews--but rather than hate them, they want to emulate them. Accordingly they've turned the tables--the Jewish state is no longer the chief threat to world peace. It is instead the key to the coming Revolution! What happens in Israel is somehow very, very important! The Party has put the Jews on a pedestal.

Again--the Party's position is moral, and they don't support Hamas, and for this they deserve credit. But it is a mistake to elevate Israel beyond its status as a small, Middle Eastern country that is home to a persecuted minority. Modern Israel is not really key to anything outside of its immediate neighborhood.

I think Mr. Barnes wants to reinforce his comrades' belief that they are a chosen people, rather like the Jews, which is why he identifies with them. (Besides, I believe many comrades are Jewish, so it makes sense.)

The third topic concerns the importance of historical materialism, which the Party claims has been ignored by the Left. Mary-Alice Waters delivered a speech entitled “Without Historical Materialism There Can Be No Working-Class Unity, No Answer to ‘Wokery,’ No Revolutionary Workers Movement.”

“Historical materialism is under ferocious attack today,” said Waters, “even though you may never hear that world outlook — one of the cornerstones of Marxism — mentioned by name.” The attacks are spearheaded not by the traditional centers of reaction, she added, but by privileged middle-class layers that many consider to be the “progressive” wing of liberal bourgeois democracy.

Historical materialism is the Marxist notion that history is driven by material forces, i.e., economics, and can--at least in broad outline--be predicted. The supposed Marxist advantage is that they understand mechanism by which history works.

The problem with the Marxist view is that it unreasonably elevates economics as history's primary driver. It ignores biological and social evolution, which is not principally about economics. It's about who is most proficient at making babies. The modern world does not look to be very good at that, which is certainly cause for concern. Evans and Studer write

The New York Times  1619 Project was one of the examples of the political war on historical materialism addressed by Waters, as well as “cancel culture” and the counterrevolution on women’s rights represented by the campaign to deny the biological reality of two sexes.

This hints at the true problem: our academic elite's concerns for "transgender rights," for birth control and abortion as positive goods, and for the abolition of the family and all associated traditions and roles--does not augur well for the future of our society. We as a culture will go extinct--with Leftist feminists leading the way to the graveyard.

A vanguard Party has to hold vanguard positions. It can't simply be an Amen Corner for the rest of the Left. By denying the silliest parts of current Leftist ideology, the Party asserts its role as a vanguard, and it also strikes a blow for common sense. I doubt this will prevent the Party from eventually dying out, but it will make it more relevant during its twilight years.

The penultimate paragraph of Evans' and Studer's article is this:

The day after the conference, party supporters met to map out plans for their work organizing the production, printing and distribution of books by SWP leaders and other revolutionaries and raising funds for the work of the party.

That's all they have to say about What Is To Be Done Next. That's it. Raise money and print books.

I will argue that the Party is still a radical Left party, and that it still lies loosely within the Trotskyist tradition. But, unlike when I was a member, it is no longer an activist Party. Instead it's a vaguely religious organization that exists for the spiritual comfort of its own members, and that believes itself to be the Chosen Vanguard.

Further Reading:

• Oberlin, 2019
• Oberlin, 2018
• The 47th SWP Convention

Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

What is the significance of the Passion of Jesus Christ for today?

Nothing! will answer most readers of this blog. The event is merely an ancient myth. Science shall eventually prevail and put religion out of business.

The author of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, René Girard (1923-2015), doesn't entirely disagree, for the Passion is indeed very much myth-like, differing only in one very important way.

Mr. Girard, an anthropologist, was born and educated in France, though he eventually received his PhD in the US, after which his academic career was entirely in America. He retired from Stanford in 1995. His important works are all written in French--the current tome is translated by James G. Williams, who also pens a useful foreword.

Mr. Girard's anthropological interest was the study of primitive and pagan religions and myths. It is only late in life that he converted to Roman Catholicism, and began writing religious books, such as I See Satan..., published in 1999. It may be described as a work of Christian apologetics.

There are two parts to this religion thing: God and Man. Belief in the former requires faith, and can't be derived from reason alone. Mr. Girard makes no effort to "prove the unprovable," and accordingly God is barely mentioned in this book. The latter subject, Man, reduces to anthropology--or at least it has to get the anthropology right. This, of course, is Mr. Girard's wheelhouse--he tells us a lot about Christian anthropology.

A key to understanding the Bible--both Old Testament and New--lies in the tenth commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Covetousness is the way Satan enters the world--I'll provide a modern example. Consider the rivalry between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos,

• Donald envies Jeff for his great wealth, perhaps a hundred-fold greater than what Donald possesses.
• Jeff envies Donald for his charm, charisma and power.

Each envies the other for what he doesn't have. Ultimately, they both want the same thing--to be the richest man in the world who is also president of the United States. In other words, they become like twins--they share the same goals and are in intense competition with each other.

Mr. Girard calls this mimetic rivalry, and pagan myths are replete with brothers, often twins, fighting to the death to successfully imitate the other. Cain murdered his brother Abel. Romulus murdered his twin brother Remus. Joseph was exiled by his jealous brothers (Gen. 37-50). Mr. Girard asserts that such stories are common among primitive peoples around the world--presumably this is documented in his previous anthropology works.

It gets worse. Mimetic rivalry can grow into mimetic contagion, i.e., groups of people competing with other groups. Republicans envy Democrats, and vice versa--which ultimately reduces them both to something twin-like. Tweedledum and Tweedledee is how my Trotskyist friends like to describe them. Mimetic contagion is the source of social conflict, discord, and disorder.

If there is good news here, it's that Satan doesn't really exist--or at least not like a person or an angel. There is not a little devil on your shoulder urging you to do naughty things. What does exist is this inborn, mimetic covetousness that leads us to take sides and hate our neighbors. It is covetousness that results in the other sins described in the ten commandments--murder, adultery, etc.

Satan exists as collective behavior as mimetic contagion--today we'd call him an emergent phenomenon--the product of covetousness.

Yet Satan--described in the Bible as the Prince of this World--has a problem. His power depends on some level of social cohesion. Failing that, everything will end up in nuclear holocaust, and Satan will be dead along with the rest of us. So the disorder and conflict can't get too far out of hand. Satan has to curb his enthusiasm--or as Mr. Girard puts it, loosely quoting the Bible, Satan expels Satan.

How does Satan do that? It's something that Mr. Girard describes as the single victim mechanism, which he again claims is ubiquitous in primitive and pagan practice. We might recognize it as human sacrifice. The archetype example presented by Mr. Girard is the story of Appolonius of Tyana upon his visit to Ephesus. He found the city suffering from a severe "epidemic," though not of a biological kind. Instead it was riven by feuds and discord caused by mimetic contagion. (Spoiler alert--the full story quoted in I See Satan... is much more horrifying than my abbreviated account.)

Appolonius perceives a solution, and fingers a poor beggar as the culprit. "See," he says. "That man there is the cause of your troubles. He should be stoned." He does eventually convince somebody to throw the first stone--after which the stones fall fast and heavy. The beggar is murdered, but because the mob truly believes that he really was the guilty party, the "epidemic" quickly fades away, eventually to be replaced by renewed mimetic contagion. The beggar is a scapegoat.

The mimetic conflicts are all laid upon a single victim--inevitably somebody who has no friends or relatives to defend him or her: beggar, leper, widow, foreigner, etc. They're all ritually killed, one by one, or perhaps several at a time--and as long as the mob believes, it works. Social solidarity is temporarily restored. Satan has expelled Satan.

Sometimes the effect--civic restoration--is so sudden and beneficial that the citizens are deeply grateful to the victim. He or she is posthumously deified, and occasionally even resurrected. Mr. Williams, in the foreword, explains that pagan gods (such as those of Greek mythology) are usually just deified,  resurrected victims.

The Hebrew Bible understood that at least some victims weren't guilty--they were innocent. Joseph--a victim not murdered but instead exiled--was not guilty. Job is set upon from all directions--yet the Bible proclaims his innocence. The Jews have through the ages disproportionately served as victims, and according to Mr. Williams the Psalms are poems sung by innocent victims. (This insight has put the Psalms in a whole new light for me.)

But now consider the Passion--which follows the single victim mechanism almost to the letter. Jesus is both a foreigner and a pain in the ass. Jerusalem is beset with conflict and strife. The mob is convinced that Jesus is the source of their problems--and so are Herod and Pontius Pilate. The latter orders him ritually tortured unto death. "Forgive them," Jesus says, "for they know not what they do." They don't, because if they did the single victim mechanism wouldn't work.

But the disciples knew--and they proclaimed it loud and clear upon Jesus' resurrection (another echo of the pagan myth). Now you may not believe in the resurrection, but what you believe is in this matter irrelevant. There is no doubt that the disciples and the apostle Paul believed in the resurrection, and they proclaimed it far and wide. The resurrection was for them also proof of Jesus' innocence. He didn't call himself a scapegoat, but he picked a much better term: lamb of God. What can be more innocent than a lamb?

The Passion has destroyed the single victim mechanism for all time. Post-Passion, it's been impossible to sacrifice human beings (and increasingly, also animals) because it won't work. Since Jesus, people no longer believe the victim is guilty--instead he or she is innocent! Killing an innocent victim is murder--and it will no longer absolve one of one's sins. Satan can no longer expel Satan. 

Satan has lost his power to expel Satan, but he still exists and still sows havoc--the political polarization in US politics is a case in point. But Jesus has taught us that victims are innocent--far from blaming the victim as the pagans used to do, we now compete to become the most victimized of all victims. Even white males are today becoming victims because of "reverse racism," or "critical race theory." Our world is full of victims, all trying to imitate each other to become the victim to end all victims. "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." We're in a mimetic competition to be "last."

That is the significance of the Passion for today! I don't think Mr. Girard is wrong.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Cult of the Smart
• Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History
• Book Review: An Anxious Age

Heather Bradford on Abortion

Heather Bradford, Socialist Action's candidate for Vice President, publishes an article entitled New anti-abortion laws: How should we respond?  Ms. Bradford is a good writer. The article is worth reading.

I have generally stayed out of the abortion debate because I'm conflicted. While I'm very sympathetic to the pro-life cause, it is clear that in this era of modern medicine totally banning abortion is utterly impossible. However bad abortion may be, it is occasionally a necessary evil. Somebody has to make a decision about when that necessity arises, and our current compromise--that the mother makes that choice during the first three months, while the law and the courts render judgement later on--seems reasonable. So I generally support abortion laws as they have existed since 1973.

So I'm not here to defend Alabama's draconian legislation essentially banning all abortions. Indeed, I'll suggest the law was passed precisely because it will never take effect. If Roe v Wade is ever overturned, the gross cruelty and impracticality of such a ban will force its repeal.

My mission here is not so much to disagree with Ms. Bradford's conclusion as to analyze her argument. Her argument doesn't make very much sense.

While she never comes out and actually says it, it appears Ms. Bradford is against any restrictions on abortion at all. She likely supports the bills floated in New York and Virginia that would permit abortion up to and even after birth--essentially legalizing infanticide. People who support those kinds of laws must really hate babies!

It's one thing to suggest that aborting a 20-week fetus isn't the same thing as murder. But killing a nearly-born or already-born baby certainly is.

Bill Clinton famously said that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. An appropriate role for pro-life groups is to ensure that last condition. Laws that demand a waiting period, suggest counseling, or offer other alternatives are, I think, entirely appropriate. Making abortion completely illegal is not.

The connection between abortion and working class politics has always been mysterious to me--even when I was a Trotskyist myself. The issue crosses class, racial, and gender lines, and is more a moral and religious issue rather than an economic one. Ms. Bradford attempts to justify her political interest in abortion, which is the weakest part of her article.

She writes:

Social Reproduction theory grounds the tasks of building a global anti-capitalist feminist movement. Understanding social reproduction theory (SRT) is vital to combating anti-abortion laws in the context of capitalism. SRT posits that capitalism does not reproduce the labor power required to perpetuate itself. In other words, capitalism produces goods and services, but doesn’t in itself produce workers and due to profit motive (wherein profit is derived from surplus value of labor), capitalism does little to provide for the upkeep of workers. Thus, women are tasked with supporting the continuation of capitalism through biological reproduction, the care of non-laborers such as children, elderly, or people with illnesses, and unpaid household labor such as cooking and cleaning.

The premise is that capitalists pay workers so little that they can't support their families. Were this true then poor people would have a lower fertility rate than rich people. This is not true--indeed, quite the opposite. Fertility is lowest in the richest countries--Japan, Germany, Italy. And highest in very poor countries--Yemen, Uganda, Philippines.

In the US the evidence doesn't support SRT, either. The most fertile populations in our country are Amish and Orthodox Jews, who number among the poorest populations. More generally, birth rates are highest for the lowest income groups, and decrease as family income rises.

SRT also states that capitalist governments will "force" women to bear children. If so, they are remarkably unsuccessful at it. Presumably Socialist Action believes China to be a capitalist country--yet far from maximizing fertility they enforced a one-child policy for several decades. Accordingly their fertility rate is well below replacement: 1.65 children per woman.

Social Reproduction Theory is false.

Ms. Bradford does not think activists should wait for the Supreme Court to overturn the Alabama law. She correctly suggests that the Roe v Wade ruling is constitutionally shaky. "The courts have never framed abortion rights as fundamental to ending the oppression of women or gender minorities." Not sure how she comes up with ending oppression to be within the remit of the Supreme Court. The word "oppression" does not appear in the Constitution at all.

Reliance on the Supreme Court

...has lent itself to a cultish following of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is viewed as a liberatory figure who must never retire (or die), lest abortion rights be overturned once and for all. The centrist justice is celebrated for her support of women’s rights, but her critique of Kaepernick’s taking a knee (which she apologized for), ruling against paying overtime to Amazon workers, support of warrantless searches in Samson v. California, and failure to condemn solitary confinement within the prison system in Davis v. Ayala mar her record.

In other words, court rulings should not be based on the Constitution, but rather entirely on Ms. Bradford's personal opinions about this or that. So it's a little rich for her to claim that

[t]he presidential nomination of and lifetime tenure of Supreme Court justices and federal judges is fundamentally undemocratic. The feudal nature of these courts should be questioned and challenged.

She wants to substitute the rule-bound, Constitutionally-appointed Supreme Court with Heather Bradford as dictator and Empress of all the Americas. This hardly seems like a step toward greater democracy.

Ms. Bradford is convinced that access to abortion is a fundamental human right, and therefore it should be included in the "free" medical care that all socialists want to provide for us. Of course it's not free--somebody's got to pay for it. Since abortion is less a medical decision than a moral or religious one, it is not obvious that it should be included with "medical procedures." So I think her opposition to the Hyde amendment (which prohibits using federal funds to pay for abortions) rests on weak ground.

Society has at least some interest in ensuring a healthy population--at very least curtailing the spread of contagious diseases. We likely have some right to insist that everybody get a measles vaccine, for example. But no such reason exists for funding abortion. The people who are required to pay for it don't object primarily for financial reasons--that's trivial--but rather for moral ones. In a free society one should not be forced to violate one's moral conscience but for overwhelming necessity. Abortion does not rise to that occasion.

I disagree with Ms. Bradford and I support the Hyde amendment. Given the fact that it's received bipartisan support over many decades, I suggest the majority of Americans agree with me.

On most issues the Millennial generation is more liberal than the Baby Boomers. But polls show that there is little difference in opinions about abortion between the two generations. While most people of any age will oppose the Alabama law, few people will agree with Ms. Bradford and claim that abortion is a fundamental human right. It's too complicated for that.

I'm uncomfortable with abortion. Yet I think it has to be legal. Like a majority of Americans, my opinion is conflicted.

Further Reading:

• How Trump Wins
• Is Elizabeth Warren an Indian?
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl

Book Review: From Fire, By Water

Author Sohrab Ahmari's memoir is entitled From Fire, By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith.

I first encountered Mr. Ahmari's writing in the pages of Commentary Magazine, the only print periodical to which I still subscribe. I do so because the writing is unfailingly excellent and about topics that interest me. Mr. Ahmari's contributions were no exception. In my mind's eye I pictured him as an old, wizened Iranian Jew, highly educated and long since exiled from his homeland.

So it was a shock to learn that he was born in Tehran in 1985, and raised in a nominally Muslim, mostly secular, upper-middle class family who imagined themselves to be "intellectuals." He and his mother emigrated to America when he was 13 years old, settling in (of all places) rural Utah. There he finished high school and attended college at Utah State, eventually graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Washington.

So I'm a sucker for the spiritual journey memoir. The first one I read many years ago was Thomas Merton's famous Seven Storey Mountain, a book describing his journey to a Trappist monastery. I even enjoy the genre in movies--among the few films I have watched more than once is the low-brow rom-com Finding Normal. While not explicitly churchy, the lady protagonist finds love, faith and happiness in small town Normal, Louisiana.

A spiritual journey typically involves a descent into "hell" (my term) followed by a climb back into the light. That is precisely the path followed by our protagonist, including a lot of drinking and loose living. Mostly it's an intellectual journey, beginning with the faux-intellectualism of his youth and bottoming out in dissolution.

Of specific interest to this blog's readers is his stop on the way down at Trotskyism. While a student at Utah State (must've been around 2003) he contacted a grouplet in Salt Lake City called the Worker's Alliance, supposedly affiliated with the Fourth International. They published a newspaper called Equity. I have never heard of this organization before, which given the plethora of Trotskyist grouplets is not surprising. But Google doesn't help--a search for Worker's Alliance or Equity turns up no relevant results.

My hunch is that our author has changed the names so as not to embarrass anybody.

Mr. Ahmari, now committed to his new ideology, moves to Seattle where the national headquarters was located, and to complete his education at UW. The only Trotskyist organization I know of headquartered in Seattle is the Freedom Socialist Party, along with sundry splinter sects therefrom. But that group is centered more around a bespoke version of feminism than Trotskyism--a topic never mentioned in the book.

One more odd thing: Mr. Ahmari refers to his comrades as "Trotskyites," a name that in our day we found insulting and derogatory. It was the term of abuse Stalinists employed against us. Accordingly we always called ourselves "Trotskyists." Though by 2003 the Stalin/Trotsky thing may have faded into history, and perhaps that bit of political correctness was no longer necessary.

Apart from walking a few picket lines, Mr. Ahmari didn't do very much. He never reports writing for their newspaper--a natural thing for him to do. Mostly he engaged in long conversations that he perceived as indoctrination sessions. For him, Trotskyism was an intellectual waystation--there was very little about it of practical significance. In my day we would have called him a dilettante--I don't think he'd disagree with that description.

Though the book is overwhelmingly intellectual, in one episode reality breaks through. Our author is locked in a room with a bunch of very poor, very desperate men about to embark on a dangerous and illegal journey, and for whom there was no turning back. Naturally, in that environment some people behave badly. In his words:

[The] house was a kind of charnel pit or Sheol, though the people in it were yet alive. It was a void, though it existed within the boundaries of space and time. It was on fire with degradation--and sin.

I wasn't there, so I don't know. But from his account I think he overstates the case. Yes, bad things happened. But there were also small acts of heroism and charity. There was degradation--but more because of poverty, panic and desperation than sin. Describing it as "Sheol" seems uncharitable.

Rather than spiritual journey, another way to read the book is as a coming of age story. In this it is remarkably similar to Hillbilly Elegy (my review here), authored by J.D. Vance. Unlike Mr. Ahmari, Mr. Vance didn't descend into "hell," but rather was born there. And the rise wasn't spiritual as much as sociological or political. Both of them found their calling at about age 30, which I think is when the (male) personality reaches maturity. (My history is similar.)

Mr. Vance, at least, is accompanied on his journey by other people, notably his sister, Lindsay. The book is as much about his grandparents as it is about him. But he acquires a wife only at the end--she arrives as a reward for successfully coming of age.

By contrast, Mr. Ahmari travels alone. His grandparents figure in the first chapter, and his mother also during the first years in Utah. But once he leaves home we barely hear from them again. I, for one, wanted very much to know how his mother made out. Unlike Mr. Vance, he gets married midway through his sojourn. The new bride makes a cameo appearance, after which he leaves her for London where he embarks on becoming a Catholic by himself.

Mrs. Ahmari must have been present (on the most important day of his life) when he'd "have the archdiocese convalidate my civil marriage." But she's not mentioned by name, and even the grammar of the sentence suggests she wasn't even there. She plays absolutely no part in his conversion, and behaves like she's a wooden post.

Weird.

There's probably an innocent explanation. Perhaps Mrs. Ahmari enjoys her privacy and doesn't want to be in the book? Or maybe he's convinced that conversion is an internal affair of the heart--solely a matter between him and God? Whatever--he comes across as a selfish cad.

How different this is from the movie Finding Normal, where the beloved is not only a suitor, but also an agent of transformation. It's the romance that makes the movie, and the movie can then carry the underlying message of faith, hope and love.

I have one more nit to pick, and only because I'm a certified geographical pedant. Mr. Ahmari's knowledge of our country's geography is simply appalling! Brownsville is not anywhere close to the Texas panhandle, nor is California north of Texas. I'm astonished that such obvious errors got by the book editors.

The above paints too negative a picture. I actually enjoyed this book--a lot. Mr. Ahmari is a good writer, it's an engaging read, I'm a fan of the genre, and it's not too long. I read it over two or three evenings just before bedtime. Beyond journeys, spiritual or otherwise, you'll learn a lot about both Iran and Utah. My review leaves out the good stuff. In part that's on purpose--go read the book for yourself.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: An Anxious Age
• Book Review: Trotsky
• Book Review: Lord of the World
• Dorothy Day

The Militant Visits Manila

For some reason my Trotskyist friends love International Book Fairs. The Militant reports on such events from diverse places like Havana, Tehran, Erbil, London, Sweden, and more. Recently they devoted two articles (dated Nov. 12 and Oct. 29) to a fair in Manila.

I don't know who the intended audience is at a book fair (bookstores? consumers? critics?) but Pathfinder Press was there. 

There was hardly an hour when the Pathfinder booth at the Sept. 12-16 Manila International Book Fair wasn’t packed with fairgoers of all ages browsing the shelves with growing enthusiasm for the books they saw. The crowds kept coming even after a powerful storm sideswiped the city Sept. 15.

The two titles championed that week were Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women (published 1993), and Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution (First edition published in 2006; recently reissued). The hosts at the booth included Ron Poulson from Australia, Janet Roth from New Zealand, and Mary-Alice Waters from New York. They were assisted by "[t]wo young Filipinos active in social and political struggles...". In addition, comrades Poulson and Waters participated in a panel discussion held at the University of the Philippines.

So I'm not interested in book fairs, which in this Amazon-era are a complete waste of time. And I'm not all that interested in the two books highlighted. I read Cosmetics... many years ago, along with author Evelyn Reed's regrettable magnum opus, Woman's Evolution (1975). I've never read Three Generals, and have no intention of doing so.

The fascinating topic for me is the city of Manila and the people who live there. My wife of 32 years was born in the Philippines and lived in Manila as a teenager and young adult. I spent about four weeks in the city, most recently in 1995. I'm due for another visit (perhaps next Spring), but I don't really like traveling there. As Mary-Alice can likely attest, the traffic is simply terrible--it's impossible to get around. And then I am required to spend most of my time listening to my wife talk Tagalog to her myriad friends and relations. It's dull.

Which doesn't mean I'm ignorant. I read a history of the city by Nick Joaquin, Manila, my Manila. It's a wonderful book, but sadly not readily available in the US. Among many other things, I recently read 1493 by Charles Mann--he devotes a long chapter to Manila. Finally, I love maps, and my wife brought me back an excellent one from a recent trip. So while I may not know Manila, I do know Manila geography.

Filipinos love nicknames, and the ones given to women baffle the Militant's authors. For example, the "coordinator of WomanHealth Philippines, convener of the Dignidad electoral coalition, and a leading member of the Philippines-Cuba Cultural and Friendship Association" goes by "Princess." That would shame an comparably well-placed, upper-middle class feminist in the United States.

That's hardly the worst of it. Common nicknames include "Baby," "Precious," "Queenie," and "Inday."  That latter is the Visayan word for "sexy young woman," or, perhaps, "bimbo." Nobody finds these names insulting--quite the contrary, they are proud of them, especially as they get older. (Men have nicknames, too--a common one, for a grown man, is "Boy.")

Two observations seem relevant. First, the Philippines is a remarkably religious country. Eighty percent are Catholic, with the remainder divided between Protestants and Muslims. Whatever their confession, they take religion extremely seriously--to the point of nailing themselves onto a cross on Good Friday. I've never met a Filipino atheist or agnostic.

Catholics (unlike Protestants or Muslims) venerate the Virgin Mary--she of the Immaculate Conception, assumed into heaven as our Blessed Mother. This whole shtick (which people take very seriously) effectively raises the status of women--especially mothers. While young women have difficult lives (as do young men), older women acquire the status of matriarch and head large extended families. The result is that marriage is especially valuable to Filipinas--one can't become a matriarch without a family. It also goes a long way to explaining the relatively high fertility rate.

Second, like women the world over, Filipinas are very fashion-conscious. Unlike what Cosmetics... claims, this is an intramural status competition among women--men are bit players. So this question from the floor is not surprising:

Fredda Ruth Rosete, a young Filipina, asked: “I want to be fashionable and to look attractive to the opposite sex. I’ve been told I’m contributing to my own oppression. Is that true?”

“The answer is no!” Waters replied. “But we have to be conscious of the pressures on us generated by the capitalist system and not let that determine our lives. ..."

Mary-Alice seems to have retreated from the hard-nosed, merciless feminism I recall from my youth. That unadulterated, radical version common in America will not appeal in the Philippines.

Re discrimination against Chinese, Mary-Alice makes the following ridiculous statement.

Waters said, “Cuba is the only country in the world where there is no discrimination against descendants of overseas Chinese. The only one! Before the Cuban Revolution, Chinese there were discriminated against as they are in all other countries where large numbers of Chinese settled.

How could she possibly know that? By what quantitative measure of discrimination against Chinese does Cuba come out identically zero?

Or put another way: Can Mary-Alice please tell us where the best Dim Sum restaurant in Havana is? I'll hazard there aren't any Dim Sum restaurants in Havana--good food is against the law there. In Manila, conversely, good Chinese food is everywhere. I had by a wide margin the best hot & sour soup ever in my entire life there.

Please don't tell me that Chinese aren't discriminated against in Havana.

Her co-panelist, Teresita Ang See (typical Chinese-Filipina name: Catholic given name, Chinese family name) understands the situation better. A little history is helpful.

The Spanish founded Manila, which prior was a swampy river delta, inhabited by fishermen who lived on the few islands. But Manila Bay is a world class harbor, and the Spanish filled in some of the swamp, founding a city at the mouth of the Pasig River. That original city exists now as Intramuros--still today a religious, cultural, and educational center of the country.

The reason for the Spanish settlement was to facilitate trade with China. In exchange for Mexican gold and silver, China sold silks, porcelain, spices, and other manufactures. Junks arrived from China carrying the goods, while galleons came from Acapulco carrying the gold. The ships traded cargoes in Manila and sailed back to where they came from.

Facilitating this trade were a group of Chinese merchants and bankers. The Spanish didn't like commerce and didn't trust the Chinese, so they were restricted to the Parian (today known as Binondo) on the other side of the Pasig. The Chinese got rich. The Spanish built their empire and aggressively practiced their religion. The local Tagalogs got nothing except Catholicism and jobs as stevedores. Or occasionally they were taken as slaves to help sail the boats in one direction or another.

For many centuries Binondo was the commercial center of the Philippines. It is still the heart of Chinatown (though that has expanded into Quiapo). Since Manila was completely leveled during WWII, postwar the commercial center was rebuilt in Makati, where there was more room. But the people who run it are still the same--Filipino-Chinese--who constitute the country's commercial class to this very day. They dominate business life.

Needless to say, all this breeds envy. Anti-Chinese pogroms are a constant throughout Philippine history--Parian itself was destroyed by rampaging mobs on numerous occasions. My wife recalls from her childhood how the Chinese were forcibly run out of her hometown--their stores and property confiscated, Idi Amin style.

Cubans are surely aware of how that works. They didn't just drive their commercial class out of a single town, but rather out of the entire country. Indeed, it's likely that the best Dim Sum restaurant in Havana is actually located in Miami.

Further Reading:

• China & the United States
• Women Are From Venus; Trotskyists Are From Pluto
• The Status of Marxists

Mary-Alice Waters' Religious View of History

Photo from The Militant, June 11, 2018

Mary-Alice Waters gave a speech in Havana last April, where she described life in West Virginia as follows:

West Virginia today has the lowest median household income of all fifty states in the union save one, Mississippi. In only three states — Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Mississippi — do teachers earn less than in West Virginia. 

Measured by official US government figures that include so-called “discouraged workers” — those who haven’t been able to find a job for so long that they’ve temporarily given up — unemployment in West Virginia is one of the highest in the country: more than 10 percent in 2017. 

The state is a center of the drug addiction crisis in the US — it has the highest opioid overdose rate in the country.

Her Cuban audience must have been astonished. The people in the picture are well-dressed and well-fed far beyond the dreams of the average Cuban. They're rich enough that they can even afford bespoke t-shirts manufactured just for their union. It's hardly a picture of "carnage" and "devastation" as described by Ms. Waters.

Yet the impoverishment of the working class is not really what the example is supposed to prove. Ms. Waters asks this question:

Did the 2016 electoral victory of Donald Trump register a rise in racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and every other form of ideological reaction among working people in the US? Is that why tens of millions of workers of all races voted for him?

 And offers this answer:

The clearest and most demonstrative answer to the [above] question is being given right now from West Virginia to Oklahoma, from Kentucky to Arizona and beyond by tens of thousands of teachers and other public workers in states Trump carried by a large margin in 2016.

While I share Ms. Waters' opinion that Trump voters are no more racist than the rest of society, surely this picture doesn't make that case. It's a group of middle-aged, middle class, lily-white women demanding more bennies for themselves. West Virginia school children are 91% white. Please, Ms. Waters, tell us how this demonstrates the progressive virtues of the working class.

For all we know, the pictured ladies weren't Trump supporters at all, but are among the 27% of West Virginian voters who cast their ballots for Clinton, who counted teachers among her strongest supporters.

In my title I refer to Ms. Waters' view as "religious." I have hesitated using that term because my Trotskyist friends view it as both disrespectful and insulting--I don't wish to be either. And admittedly, the "religion" analogy doesn't fit perfectly. Trotskyists don't believe in supernatural beings, nor do they acknowledge any benefit in prayer. But (especially having just read and reviewed An Anxious Age) her piece is such a wonderful example of religious argument that it's hard to ignore.

Ms. Waters asks a second question:

Is a socialist revolution in the US really possible? Or are those like ourselves, who answer with an unhesitating “Yes,” a new variety of utopian socialist fools, however well meaning?

I'd replace the (needlessly demeaning) word "fools" with "believers," but otherwise I concur with that second choice.

We in the Socialist Workers Party are certainly among a small minority, even among those who call themselves socialists, who say without hesitation, “Yes, socialist revolution is possible in the United States.” And no liberating movement of millions can ever be imposed “from the outside” on any country.  

We say not only is socialist revolution in the US possible. Even more important, revolutionary struggles by the toilers are inevitable. They will be forced upon us by the crisis-driven assaults of the propertied classes — as we’ve just seen in West Virginia. And they will be intertwined, as always, with the example of the resistance and struggles of other oppressed and exploited producers around the globe.  

What is not inevitable is the outcome. That is where political clarity, organization, prior experience, discipline, and, above all, the caliber and experience of proletarian leadership are decisive.

What Ms. Waters describes here is her "railroad track" view of history. The historical train is moving relentlessly down the track, pulled inevitably forward by capitalist "contradictions" and "crises." Ahead lies a switch, and unless the switch is thrown we're headed off a cliff--toward catastrophe and World War III--eternal damnation. But, follow the "political clarity" of the Vanguard Party (i.e., the Socialist Workers Party) then redemption is at hand and we'll all live happily ever after.

It's a heaven and hell story, albeit with both outcomes existing here on this earth. The outcome depends only on the success of the Vanguard Party to throw the switch in time. While Ms. Waters is the movement's most explicit theologian, pretty much the same dogma is held by all the Trotskyist grouplets I cover, with slight denominational differences.

No religion is complete without a notion of sin. Sin is the one great empirical fact of all religion--all normal people (excepting only small children and psychopaths) understand that there is evil, both in the world and in the individual heart. Religion offers a path to defeat sin: in Hinduism it is reincarnation until Nirvana is reached; in Christianity it will happen when Christ comes again to redeem his world. And so on.

For Trotskyists, the principle sin is inequality--of income, education, health, immigration status, etc. All humans are created equal; any variation amongst us is the result of sin. As Ms. Waters puts it,

The point is that without understanding the devastation of the lives of working-class families in regions like West Virginia (and there are many more) — without understanding the vast increase since the 2008 financial crisis in class inequality, including the accelerating inequality within classes — you won’t be able to understand what’s happening in the United States.

Per Trotskyism, the important sins are not personal (e.g., thou shalt not commit adultery), but rather social (thou shalt not be a bigot). They are, in fact, the same sins put forward by Walter Rauschenbusch, the founder of  the social gospel. (See An Anxious Age for more about this.) Indeed, I'll suggest that the American Trotskyist movement depends as much on Rauschenbusch's thought as it does on Karl Marx.

Finally, please note the style of Ms. Waters' argument. She cites neither statistics nor any historical progression. Instead she lists a series of totemic events--the 1930s Teamsters' strike, the fight against Jim Crow, and the Vietnam-era antiwar movement. And, yes, the recent Red-State teachers' strikes, even though those are already yesterday's news.

There is no logical connection between any of these events, and they have only minimal impact on what happens today. Instead, they represent prophetic fulfillment. For just as Christians draw prophecy from the Old Testament pointing to the death and resurrection of Christ, Trotskyists prophesy from old labor history and the Russian Revolution. The working class really is awakening! The End Times are being foretold!

One can't criticize religion for being not true. I think even devout believers know in their heart of hearts that what they believe in isn't true. But, however false, religion is incredibly useful. It allows one to orient one's life, to find meaning, and to establish reassuring connections with a global community. It's all bound together by ritual and dogma.

Trotskyism isn't true, but unlike Christianity and other world religions, it also isn't particularly useful.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: An Anxious Age
• Sex and the Alpha Male
• Louis Proyect and the Pro-Poverty Girl

Book Review: An Anxious Age

In An Anxious Age, author Joseph Bottum writes as a Catholic and a sociologist, in this book both in equal measure. He's been criticized from both sides: a devout Catholic said he failed to emphasize the "saving power of faith in Jesus," while a retired IBM engineer faulted him for imagining "that religion has any reality at all."

Mr. Bottum's work survives his critics. He is determined to write a book of sociology rather than theology, while also vigorously defending the role of religion in the discipline. Indeed, he follows in the footsteps sociology's founders: Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), Emile Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life), and William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience) all obviously thought religion central to their study. He could also have included Karl Marx on that list, who didn't ignore religion either.

It is only latter day academic sociologists who have dismissed religion, obsessed as they are with race, class and gender. It is worth pointing out that Mr. Bottum has not been an academic, freeing him from the straitjacket of tenure and political correctness. Instead he has earned a living mostly as a journalist and author, distinguishing him in yet another way from his academic peers: the man is a superb writer!

Good writing certainly helps--a lot--but the book is not an easy read. It is incredibly dense and complicated. One shouldn't read it (as I did) on a Kindle--the dead tree version armed with a sharp pencil is a better way to approach this one.

The question Mr. Bottum asks is What happened to the mainline Protestant churches in America? Until about 1960 they dominated our society--the majority of people were churchgoing, and a Protestant ethos dominated our civil discourse. In those days (according to Jewish lore) Jews would become Episcopalians just so they could join the right country club.

But after 1960 it all fell apart. Not only would no Jew even consider becoming an Episcopalian today, the mainline denominations--Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, northern Baptists, Congregationalists--have simply fallen apart, their membership declining to nearly nothing. What happened to all those people? Where did they go?

Some of them became evangelicals--and for a while that was considered the main destination. A smaller group converted to Catholicism. But the majority didn't do either. Instead they lifted themselves out of the pews and ascended into (in their view) a more spiritual place, freed from the stifling and arbitrary rote of "organized religion." In a word, they became post-Protestants, a term Mr. Bottum shortens to poster children.

Who are these poster children, and what do they believe? Typically they hang tenuously on to the coattails of the upper middle class. Occasionally, as for some professors and journalists, that is true in terms of income. More commonly it is in their self-image as members of the elite--the opinion-makers of America. These people hold the right opinions, or as I would put it, they are the keepers of political correctness.

They are not really elite. They're actually just shlubs, generally with undistinguished, middle class jobs as teachers, counselors, civil servants, yoga instructors, etc., defined not so much by their social standing, but rather by a spiritual quality. They view themselves as morally superior--wiser and more perspicacious than others. Certainly more woke than the people they left behind in "organized religion," whom they regard as backward and uncivilized.

More accurately, elite isn't the right descriptor--instead they are members of the elect. They believe themselves to be redeemed, justified through their spirituality, and accomplished by renouncing six evils: bigotry, power, corruption, mass opinion, militarism, and oppression. To which one can add the despoliation of nature. Unlike the unwashed masses, the poster children are guaranteed salvation because of their enlightened attitudes and social activism.

Obviously there is a connection with New England Puritanism, but mediated through American history. Mr. Bottum calls this his the Erie Canal Thesis: that Protestant America descends from Puritanism, but was incubated and elaborated in Upstate New York--also known as the burnt over district. From this region originated the Millerites (today's Seventh-Day Adventists), Spiritualism (which remnant survives in Lily Dale, NY, a worthy tourist destination), and Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormons), along with the women's suffrage movement (Seneca Falls, NY).

Most important in Mr. Bottum's story is Walter Rauschenbusch, son of German immigrants who later joined the faculty at the Rochester Theological Seminary, then part of the University of Rochester. If not the founder, he is at very least the leading exponent of the social gospel movement. Mr. Rauschenbusch is responsible for the six evil sins listed above, which form the core of his belief system.

Two things are apparent: first, though Mr. Rauschenbusch was a Christian, belief in Jesus was actually incidental to his theology. And second, none of the six evils depend on personal behavior--these are not individual sins, but rather social demons. By understanding and combating the six sins, the believer became a redeemed personality, and can be confident of salvation.

The poster children took the logical step and separated the social gospel from its historical faith. Gone was Jesus and the cross; only social sins remained, in recognition of which the person was redeemed. And so were born the post-Protestant elect. Their confidence in salvation is what makes them sound to other Americans as arrogant elitists.

The second half of Mr. Bottum's book is about a revived Catholic faith, the story of how Protestant converts and youthful, born Catholics rejuvenated the Church and responded to the leadership of Pope John Paul II. He dubs these the "swallows of Capistrano." This section is more complicated (I found the first chapter very slow going), and I can't summarize it briefly.

One theme is the failed alliance between Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. The latter brought energy and numbers in support for social conservatism, while the latter brought theological and philosophical depth. In particular, natural law philosophy allowed the opposition to abortion to be stated in secular terms.

The effort to fight legal abortion failed. (As, indeed, it had to. Mr. Bottum doesn't point out the successes of the movement.) The Catholic-Evangelical alliance never captured more than a sliver of the electorate, and acquired no purchase among cultural elites. That was the preserve of post-Protestants.

My criticism of Mr. Bottum's thesis stems from my recent reading of Albion's Seed and Colin Woodard's book (my review here), both on colonial immigration to America. While Mr. Bottum is correct that American Protestantism is not just recycled Puritanism, it remains overwhelmingly a Yankee institution. Like today's post-Protestant elect, the Puritans of yore aspired to build a City on a Hill. Think Barack Obama's favorite phrase (echoing Walter Rauschenbusch), "We can do better than that!" for a summation of poster child Puritanism.

Conversely, Evangelicals are over-represented among the Scots-Irish of Appalachia. Yes, they were originally Presbyterians, but I infer from Albion's Seed that religion was less important to them than it was for other American cultures. Their worship style and theology really hasn't changed all that much. In this case I think Mr. Bottum overstates the decline of Protestant churches.

In summary, I think the poster children are more a Yankee phenomenon than representative of America generally. And the rise of Evangelicalism is as much to do with a simple renaming of Appalachian religion than anything new under the sun.

I think Mr. Bottum is right to bring religion back into sociology. What he says is really interesting. I'm too old to read hard books that are poorly written. I did read this book--from cover to cover. It's a beautiful book and well worth your time. Make sure you sharpen your pencil.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: The Righteous Mind
• Dorothy Day
• A Marxist Pope?

Politics & Evolution

In which I claim that Dr. Ben Carson and Mr. Louis Proyect hold similar beliefs.

My Trotskyist friends claim to accept the theory of evolution while also denying it. In this they are typical of the Left. And also of the Right.

Louis Proyect is a good example. I reviewed his extensive criticism of Napoleon Chagnon in a post entitled Marxism & Evopsych, which includes a critique of the Marxist view on evolution. I won't repeat that here except to say that contrary to their claim, Marxists deny the theory of evolution, at least as it applies to human beings.

Since writing that review I have read and reviewed two books on the subject: one by Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind), and the other by Nicholas Wade (A Troublesome Inheritance). These render my Marxism & Evopsych remarks somewhat incomplete, and I confess probably lend some credence to Mr. Proyect's complaints against modern Darwinism.

The latter book is particularly troublesome, as the name implies. It argues that ethnic differences are indeed more than skin deep, and also include variations in personality. In particular, the circle of trust appears to be under significant genetic control. People who have lived in urban areas for many generations, for example, will tend to be more trusting of strangers than folks who've spent the last millennium out in the bush. 

Other people (not Mr. Wade) argue that things like IQ is significantly heritable, and that ethnic groups differ in average IQ, often by a significant margin. Indeed, a recent book by Garett Jones (The Hive Mind) argues that the wealth of nations depends crucially on the average IQ of its population. (He speculates that it may depend more strongly on the IQ of the top 5%, though that's unproven.)

Such ideas have a long and disreputable heritage, as Mr. Proyect will be quick to point out. This chart is easily found by searching for "iq by nation". 

It's been reposted by such worthies as Stormfront (I won't honor them with a link) and FreeRepublic. Nevertheless, the data in this chart seem mostly reproducible and correct, as Mr. Jones discusses in detail. (The causes of the phenomenon are a matter of considerable controversy.)

So actually I don't blame Mr. Proyect for denying evolution's application to human beings. It paints a grim picture of our species. Our prognosis is not good. Mr. Proyect aspires to a better world, and in doing so he is forced to deny science.

Another politico who sides with Mr. Proyect is the presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson. Dr. Carson is a retired neurosurgeon, serving as the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins for nearly 30 years. As such he must know something about evolution, and it is unlikely that he rejects it altogether. Even though he says "I don't believe in evolution... I simply don't have enough faith to believe that something as complex as our ability to rationalize, think, and plan, and have a moral sense of what's right and wrong, just appeared." [All Carson quotes from Wikipedia.]

Further,

In October 2015, Carson stated that he does accept the idea of natural selection, but there is only evidence for microevolution (changes in allele frequencies that occur over time within a species), which he believes was the result of "a wise creator who gave his creatures the ability to adapt to their environment so that he wouldn't have to start over every 50 years", whereas "there's never been one species that's turned into another species, that can be proved." 

But then, with respect to using fetal tissue for research, he said "to not use the tissue that is in a tissue bank, regardless of where it comes from, would be foolish. Why would anybody not do that?"

So like Mr. Proyect, Dr. Carson is inconsistent on evolution. When it comes to his professional life he has at least implicitly accepted it. But in his religious and political world he adamantly rejects it. In this he is like most people--they reject evolution on Sunday when they go to church, but rely on it on Monday when they visit the doctor. Surely this ability to compartmentalize is an evolved, human trait.

It's very difficult to be consistent on evolution. Maybe some devoutly religious people qualify--like those Christian Scientists who reject any and all medical care, or perhaps some of the faculty at Bob Jones University. But such folks are few and far between.

Then there are people who raise evolution to the status of religion: I'd put Stormfront or FreeRepublic in that category. They consider the above IQ chart to be divinely inspired. Leave aside, for the moment, that they don't know what they're talking about.

Also consistent on evolution is Boko Haram. I don't mean in an intellectual sense--I doubt the Bokos know anything about science. But in the way they live their lives they obey evolution's core principles:

1. The ultimate measure of evolutionary success can be measured by the fertility rate of one's children and grandchildren.
2. Evolution cares not a whit for the happiness of the individual organism.

So consider the 250+ schoolgirls from Chibok kidnapped by Boko, and then sold off as wives and concubines.

1. The lifetime fertility of these girls is likely to be very high--at least for those who survive. Four or five children apiece, subsequently yielding 20+ grandchildren is a reasonable guess. Further, the reproductive success of the kidnappers is virtually assured--how many of the girls are already pregnant?
2. Yet prospects for happiness for the girls is dire. Or, as an evolutionist might put it, who cares.

Compare the Bokos' fertility with that of aging ex-Trotskyists. I don't believe Mr. Proyect has any offspring (or at least none mentioned on his blog). I have two, but not yet any grandchildren. How many unrelated ex-Trotskyists would you have to put in a room before they could cumulatively match the reproductive success of one Boko platoon leader?

There is no doubt, at least compared to Trotskyists, that the Bokos have a better understanding of evolution.

And yet any member of civilized society--among whom I'd count myself and both Dr. Carson and Mr. Proyect--will object. While we might state it differently, our creed maintains We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of course evolution denies all of this: the Truths are not only not self-evident, they're not even true. We weren't endowed by any creator, and we don't have any unalienable rights. And for Happiness? Just ask the organisms from Chibok about that!

So I sympathize with Misters Proyect & Carson. Their selective denial of evolution is a mark of civilization, not scientific ignorance (though in the case of Mr. Proyect it is that, too). Despite my own passionate defense of the science of evolution, I have no use for those who raise it to moral principle. Accordingly I would never vote for any ultra-rationalist candidate--not Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett or Christopher Hitchens. Nor would I vote for Barack Obama.

Still, I think Dr. Carson gets the better of any debate. He has three children, and one presumes also some grandchildren. Religious people are more able to successfully reproduce, despite denying evolution, than us more secular sorts. This is civilized religion's great advantage: it potentially answers the question of our age: how can we successfully reproduce in an environment that contains birth control and still remain civilized?

I would never vote for Dr. Carson for biology teacher of the year. For other reasons I probably won't vote for him as president. But on the issue of evolution he's probably closest to getting it right.

Evolution is a science. That's all it is. It tells you something about the human species, but it cannot be the moral lodestar or a religious foundation. As Katherine Hepburn famously said, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

Further Reading:

• Dorothy Day
• Subway Values
• Book Review: Lord of the World

Dorothy Day

I've been an admirer of the Catholic Worker (CW) movement for a long time, albeit from a distance and not uncritically. A comparison with Trotskyism is appropriate.

Founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day (1897 - 1980) and Peter Maurin (1877 - 1949), the Catholic Worker newspaper has been published ever since. Peter Maurin was the intellect behind the effort, but the legs (and most of the credit) go to the amazing Dorothy Day. By comparison, The Militant was first published in 1928, and apart from a brief, early interruption, is also still around.

The CW movement sponsors houses of hospitality, that today we might recognize as homeless shelters. In the 1930s, however, at the depths of the depression, many otherwise working class people needed assistance.

Dorothy was a Leftist before she was a Catholic. She had close friends in the Communist Party in her early years. She wrote for the Daily Worker, and also for The Masses. I don't believe she seriously encountered Trotskyism, and I think she would have seen it as equivalent to Stalinism.

So here is my understanding of what CW represents, in bullet points.

• They are principled pacifists. Dorothy distinguished herself from Communists saying that she was "a pacifist even in the class war." CW is long associated with people like A. J. Muste (a former SWP comrade), Thomas Merton, and Daniel Berrigan.
• They accept the Marxist meme: We're poor because the rich people stole all the money. That led to Dorothy's sympathy for Stalin, Mao, and Castro, among others. But unlike the Communists, she never forgave them for their mass murder and persecution of religion.
• CW is resolutely Catholic. While they have disagreed with the Church on individual issues (just war theory, for example, as that conflicts with their pacifism), they subscribe to Catholic morality. They oppose abortion. I think many of them oppose birth control. Dorothy from her own personal experience deeply opposed the "free love" movement, and accordingly took issue with much of second-wave feminism. I recall some years ago reading the reminiscences of a long-time Leftist who spent his early years around CW. He eventually fell away, finally realizing that they were really serious about their Catholic faith, which he didn't share. The name wasn't (and isn't) just a historical artifact.
• They believe that physical labor is essential to humanity. They assert the dignity of the working man and woman. Dignity is a stronger reason for full employment than the wage (though that's important, too).
• Most important, they subscribe to personalism, i.e., the essential purpose of good works is made at the level of the individual. Not for them is the mass movement, nor are they concerned about changes in GDP. The Catholic Worker newspaper frequently features extended obituaries of homeless people, often mentally ill.

For CW, the most important words of Jesus are these:

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

I have just finished reading Ross Douthat's book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. One of the heresies he discusses is that of the social gospel, i.e., elevating the quoted Bible verses above all others. In America the social gospel as a heresy was founded by Walter Rauschenbusch in the early 20th Century, and rewritten for our own time by Harvard's Harvey Cox. Many Protestant denominations and Catholic orders fell for it, subsuming the entire Christian faith into those short verses, and gradually rendering themselves irrelevant in the process. Mr. Douthat offers the Jesuits as an example.

But by hewing closely to the rest of Catholicism, Dorothy Day and CW has managed to avoid that heresy. They have successfully combined the social gospel with a vibrant, durable Christian faith. She resolutely rejected the notion of founding a religious order, though as a movement it had a charism that emphasized care of the poor and physical labor. But charism and heresy are two different things. Dorothy never dispensed with the rest of Catholicism.

I first heard of the Catholic Worker (CW) movement from a comrade in Portland when I was a new member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Curiously, I don't recall a single mention of the Catholic Worker movement ever in The Militant, nor in any of its latter day offspring.
That oddity is the subject of this essay.

To my knowledge, no CW house was located in Portland in the early 70s, and so I never encountered CW directly until much later in life. In those days, CW appealed to the counterculture and attracted some hippies. Much to Dorothy's dismay, some houses tolerated pot and sex. Each house was independent--there was no overarching hierarchy, and accordingly wide variations in house rules. So the Catholic part of the mission was occasionally lost and the house degenerated into a hippie commune. Somehow Dorothy managed to keep enough of them on the straight and narrow to maintain the integrity of the movement.

The SWP regarded CW as irrelevant--we would have called them Jesus freaks. Given CWs aversion to mass movements (that they regarded, correctly, as incipiently totalitarian), we never encountered them at antiwar demonstrations. They preferred nonviolent terrorism, such as breaking into military bases and spilling red paint onto ICBMs. Still, in a larger sense, they would have been part of the antiwar coalition that the SWP led in the early 1970s.

The political role of CW was anarchism. In this they are very much like Marina Sitrin, recently described in a piece in Socialist Action (see here). Ms. Sitrin obviously does not share CW's Catholic faith, but in most other respects her political point of view is identical. They both subscribe to the Marxist meme, they both reject "state power," and they both believe in social change from the bottom up.

But CW is a more durable, truer face of anarchism. The only reason to care about the poor is for moral or spiritual reasons. From any standpoint of practical economics, the poor are irrelevant. The contribution of sub-Saharan Africa to the world economy is negligible. Fortunately, the moral and spiritual motivates lots of people (and not just Leftists), and so much effort is devoted to helping the poor. The difference between CW and Marina Sitrin--and, for that matter, the SWP and Socialist Action--is that CW explicitly recognizes the moral and spiritual dimensions of poverty. They quote a Bible verse to prove it.

By any reasonable measure Dorothy Day has been phenomenally successful. Arguably, Pope Francis is an adherent to the Catholic Worker movement, with his emphasis on voluntary poverty, help for the poor, and his devotion to the Franciscan tradition. Far from being a voice in the wilderness, CW now has the ear of the Vatican establishment. They're not exactly happy about that, and they are resisting the canonization of Dorothy Day.

I take issue with CW on two things.  Recognizing the spiritual and moral necessity of helping the poor is one thing, but it is not necessary to throw out everything we know about economics. Their adherence to the Marxist meme is destructive and does not help the poor. Capitalism helps the poor, partly because most capitalists want to get through the eye of that needle, but mostly because it makes everybody richer. As we've mentioned, today's homeless are not at all the same population as the poor people in Dorothy's depression era. In the way Dorothy understood it, there simply aren't any poor people in the United States today.

The second thing is faith. I'm a practicing Catholic (because of my wife), but not a believing one. I don't have faith. She put it this way.

I had a conversation with John Spivak, the Communist writer, a few years ago, and he said to me, "How can you believe? How can you believe in the Immaculate Conception, in the Virgin birth, in the Resurrection?" I could only say that I believe in the Roman Catholic Church and all she teaches. I have accepted Her authority with my whole heart. At the same time I want to point out to you that we are taught to pray for final perseverance. We are taught that faith is a gift, and sometimes I wonder why some have it and some do not. I feel my own unworthiness and can never be grateful enough to God for His gift of faith.

 I, sadly, do not have that gift of faith. But I admire people who do. I admire Dorothy Day.

Further Reading:

• What Would Lenin Do?
• Book Review: Lord Of The World
• A Marxist Pope?